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Another #NE02 name as Ashford makes a move

December 11, 2014

We have the name of a new person interested in the 2016 GOP nomination for the 2nd District gig! Actually we have known about this person for a while, but we have heard it from enough sources now that we are comfortable that it is common knowledge by local politicos:

Brigadier General Donald “Bits” Bacon (Retired November 01,2014).

(NOTE: We are updating this Bio, as the one from the Offutt site is dated.)

Brig. Gen. Donald J. Bacon is the Director of ISR Strategy, Plans, Doctrine and Force Development at the AF/A2, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, the Pentagon. He is responsible for the force development of over 25,000 ISR Total Force Airmen; the integration of ISR planning with the intelligence community, Joint Staff and Air Force major commands; and the formulation of ISR vision, policy and strategy.

General Bacon entered the Air Force in 1985 through Officer Training School at Lackland AFB, Texas. He served in numerous operational and staff assignments at base level, numbered Air Force and Headquarters U.S. Air Force. His assignments include command of 55th Wing, Offutt AFB, Nebraska, and the 435th Air Base Wing, Ramstein Air Base, Germany; Chief of Special Operations and Intelligence Information, Multi-National Force, Iraq; Commander, 55th Electronic Combat Group at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona; and Executive Officer to the Chief of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer, Secretary of the Air Force, Washington, D.C. He also commanded an EC-130H squadron at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, and an expeditionary squadron in Qatar during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

We don’t know if he has made a firm decision one way or another, but we are certain he is thinking about it.

One has to think that a Brigadier General has some almost automatic qualifications for a gig in Congress. That being said, we are a little surprised that a General (let alone the Brigidier part) would want a lowly House gig.

Then again, if you want a very strained comparison, you could look at…Tom Osborn. When he left his gig, he was the top college football coach in the country. He was the head of a hundred or so men, big staff, multi-million dollar facilities.

Then he became a Frosh in Congress.

We were never clear on how much he did or didn’t hate working in Washington, but it is interesting. Maybe the two have chatted.

***

Speaking of First-Class-Brad Ashford, Some have made the point that “Hey, 2nd District Republicans! You are already talking about who is going to run against Ashford?! How about giving him a chance before you start running against him!”

So you see that while many don’t think the GOP should be gearing up now, Brad certainly thinks it is time to get the campaign trucking. Oh, and at a $1,000 a pop to watch the Jays? We suspect there will be slightly cheaper floor seats that night — even for Uber-Fan Mike Fahey.

Now, sure, we get it. That is the nature of the political game. But please stop with the Holier than Thou statements.

Ashford officially waved the green flag on #NE02 2016.

***

Former Nebraska Senator — and member of the 9/11 Commission — Bob Kerrey’s comments on the Democrat “Torture Report” were a bit surprising. He slammed the report for its Monday-morning quarterbacking on this big issue. Most remember the period after the 9/11 attacks as “we will use every means necessary to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Now Senate Democrats want to spin the era in their favor.

But the main thing that we take from the report — and Kerrey and Senator Deb Fischer both made this point — is that it is ridiculous that this turned into a partisan fishing expedition by the Democrats. This is a serious report that has worldwide implications, and the Dems decided to use it to score political points. They decided the result they wanted and wrote the report around that.

This is not a game, yet the Senate Democrats turned it into one.

(Oh, and for those of you keeping score, Democrat Congressman-elect Ashford toed the Democrat party-line.)

***

In our discussion of the DCRP meet last week, we left out the Resolution passed calling for “open votes” for Unicameral committee chairs.

Currently those votes are kept secret.
And in the past session Democrats chaired 9 of 14 committees.

Many statewide Republicans, who note that Nebraskans voted in a majority Republican legislature, don’t see the sense in that.

“Oh but Sweeper! You’re so wrong! The legislature is non-partisan, and that’s what makes it awesome! Nebraskans don’t vote party!”

…say the Democrats who want you to believe that.
Isn’t that adorable?

And if the Democrat truly believe that, then please, do like Ernie and don’t register with either party. Then again, you could just pull a Congressman-elect Ashford and juggle your party affiliation depending on what your mood-ring tells you.

We chuckled at the quote in the Watchdog story from Democrat Chair Vince Powers, “The Nebraska Democratic Party believes strongly that state senators should vote for a committee chair who is best suited to serve Nebraska, regardless of party.”

Said the party Chairman.
Who wants to keep a secret vote.

Wait, we thought light was the best disinfectant???

***

Mazel tov to 3rd District Rep Adrian Smith (who took over for the aforementioned Dr. Tom) and Andrea McDaniel on their recent nuptials!

***

Shopping season is on!

Click one of those Amazon banners up top and slap an anonymous high-five to Leavenworth St. while you (at no extra cost) get great deals from Amazon.

51 comments

No thanks no war monger for Congress from D2.
As far as the secret ballot from the unicam for committee chairs, it would take a rules change, and last time it was proposed the issue was unanimously defeated. So just because some knuckleheads in the state GOP want the change don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen.

Ashford’s CU event is just a way for the Washington elite to funnel cash to him. Why would they do that for a nobody inept Congressman who will not get re-elected? Who knows. Maybe for the same reason Bob Kerrey got paid $800k to hawk cold fusion: quid pro quo. I hope the FEC is looking carefully at those donations to Ashford to make sure that they aren’t fraudulent and actually all come from one or two people. I do wish I lived in DC so I could attend the event. I’d pay a dollar to go. No, I’d give him a some fives: high five, low five, side to side.

Say, I just read somewhere else that the Unicam’s ‘Tax Incentive Evaluation Committee’ recommends new measures for regulating Nebraska’s crony capitalism. Among it’s goals is a measure of how many jobs were created and how many of those jobs resulted in unemployment claims within two years. They also want to know the cost of job-subsidies and whether the cost is greater than new income and sales tax revenue resulting from those job-subsidies. Duh! Seems like information they should have secured BEFORE creating tax incentives…

This most recent ‘Evaluation Committee’ brings to mind the Revenue Committees as chaired by Wickersham (whose leadership was forthright and trustworthy and doggedly inquisitive of these very isues) and then Landis (whose ‘but-for’ speech brought to mind Bill Clinton’s explanation of what the verb ‘is’ means). I’ve seen these tax evaluations and Revenue Committee, and Dept. of Revenue analyses over and again: the jobs y’all are buying cost you more than the new revenue gained, particularly in the short term. Look out twenty or more years for a return on your job subsidy “investments.” And when you consider ALL tax expenditures granted, Nebraskans easily forgive MORE of Nebraska’s income and sales tax base then you collect. Just think of it, if everybody had to pay their taxes, your income and sales tax rates could be cut in half, or more, with no reduction in the General Fund!

Do any of you know whether the ‘Tax & Revenue Analysis In Nebraska’ (TRAIN, 1998) is still be used there?

This study, using TRAIN, estimated the General Fund revenue loss and analyzed economic consequence of a tax reduction when reducing income taxes by 10 percent. […] Three simulations were conducted according to the types of tax reduction: the individual income tax reduction, the corporate income tax reduction, and a simultaneous individual and corporate income tax reduction.

In the case of individual and corporate income tax reduction, the TRAIN estimated that the General Fund revenue losses were $103.0 and $104.8 million under a normal and a tight labor market condition, respectively.

[…]

In the case of the corporate income tax reduction, the revenue loss WAS LARGER than the disposable income gain. Because a corporate taxpayer does not necessarily reside in Nebraska, the benefits of reducing the corporate income tax can flow to out-of-state investors as well as resident investors, which results in a disposable income gain in Nebraska THAT IS LESS than the General Fund revenue loss. {Emphasis mine.}

Here’s what’s gonna happen there:
Both R’s and D’s in the officially non-partisan unicam will not vote for full disclosure of these time-honored legislative secrets; they might say they want to let the sunshine in, but they won’t do it!

Chambers will rant and rave, he’ll threaten to stop all legislation, but in the end, they won’t abolish this unjust taxing practice and Chambers won’t make them do it. And in a few years, they’ll have another evaluation… RIGHT NOW, YOU GIVE AWAY MORE OF YOUR TAX BASE THAN YOU COLLECT, NEBRASKA!

P.S. to Ricky:
I know you believe otherwise about income tax collections, but you are simply wrong in your thinking that a regressive income tax is less *fair* than a flat tax. At any rate, your D’s will continue to sustain crony capitalism right along with your R’s there, so, I ask you once again, why do you stay there? You said because it’s your home and you love it, but what you write about Omaha doesn’t seem like love, and, your D’s are not real D’s…

NDP Chair Vince Powers: “… most state senators know that their bosses are the people of Nebraska.”

Why then does the NDP Chair not realize that HIS bosses are the people of Nebraska, or at least the registered Democrats in Nebraska?
Vince Powers continues the practice of recent NDP Chairs of ignoring the will of his party’s people as expressed in the NDP’s Constitution, Bylaws and the resolutions approved by both the NDP State Convention and the NDP State Central Committee.
I was a delegate to this year’s NDP State Convention, as I have been several times before. The delegates to that body are, according to the NDP’s own Constitution, the party’s “supreme governing body.” And yet, practically every single resolution or rule decided upon by those delegates is universally ignored by the State Chair if they don’t agree with his own policies.
The NDP State Central Committee meets this weekend and I would hope that at least SOME of the delegates will take their responsibilities seriously. They should hold Mr. Powers’ feet to the fire and demand that he abide by the will of the people of his party. If he is unwilling to lead the party as directed by his superiors, then he should step down and allow someone that will to hold the reins.
—— —— ——
I hear through the grapevine that Vince Powers wants to replace the current NDP Executive Director with its Finance Director, Hadley Richters. While I’m sure that Ms. Richters is a fine person, I question whether she has the skills, experience and background that it would take to render the NDP a viable political organization in this state. I hear there may be a move by some members of the NDP SCC to suggest a search committee to fill the position. Powers will probably just ignore them.
I have also heard that the NDP office in Lincoln is pretty much penniless. It seems odd that Powers would want to promote the person most responsible for raising money for the party in light of its failure to do so.
Maybe Vince needs to call on his Finance Chair, Andy Holland, to throw another big fundraiser for the party. Her ability to raise money was her claim to fame when she ran in her unsuccessful bid for NDP National Committeewoman against the winner, Maureen Monahan. Powers stabbed Monahan, his then sitting NDP NCW, in the back when he sent an email out to all of the State Convention delegates endorsing Holland … without even telling Monahan he planned to dump her. Fortunately, the delegates were wiser.

Before Vince’s attack dogs come on here and rant about my posts to a “Republican” blog, perhaps they should talk to Vince about re-instating the NDP blog so that actual Democrats can participate in it, as it once was before the Censor in Chief, Vic Covalt ended the practice of freedom of speech within the NDP. As of now it only serves to offer the remnants of Vile Kyle’s New Nebraska Network.
That might be another good thing for the NDP SCC delegates to take up this weekend.

When America stops glorifying Generals like this guy I never heard of, and stops having “flyovers” at every sporting event, and have every other day as a salute to the military, then maybe we can cut down the defense budget and stop invading smaller and weaker countries than ours.
America has the biggest, most bloated military in the world, far bigger than we need, and the waste is astronomical.
So I would not be in favor of electing some guy from SAC to represent us in Congress.
Why proceed with this charade of gun touting warplane making chest pounding sending our young people off to some god forsaken country to fight when there is no real threat to America, then treat the soldiers like crap when they come back with concussions and PSDT or whatever?
Stop it America!
And by the way I am not a registered Democrat and they are not my party. The Nebraska Dems are far too meek for my taste. And I am not going to move to some shit hole like Texas just because I disagree with most people’s politics in this state.

Well L Street, I have come to bare my soul and ask for your prayers to stay on at Memorial stadium even after the hapless BO has got bounced.
Lord help us for God’s sake; I’m about to be canned from the University of Nebraska’s football coaching staff! Like Jesus said in Mathew 8 18 “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead”
I know what you mean Father: Let BO’s followers bury the guy, but I need a job and I like it here!
I can lead my own prayer circles in the third largest city in Nebraska!
And by the way; I know I am right about the homosexuals in Nebraska and was right to go before the Omaha City Council to argue against same sex marriage or whatever the issue was back then; can’t remember exactly. Because the bible says : “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God”
See what did I say? The effeminate can not get into heaven! Told you!
But here I sit in limbo; Barney is going to coach the bowl game; and I know Southern Cal has a bunch of studs that will probably kick our asses; given what we have done against decent teams under the asshole BO. I never did actually like that guy; the Lord does not favor people that throw the F bomb around constantly.
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” Corinthians . That is what I always told my running backs, even that Muslim Ameer; never understood that guy; I thought America was at war with Islam?
Anyway, this could be my last go-round with the Huskers; I have TO to thank for me lasting this long; my fellow Christian always had a soft heart for those who profess their love for the Lord. Too bad we could never be as good of a team as we were in the 90’s, (by the way we cheated a LOT more in those days). As God be my witness!
So, L Street readers; if this is our last goodbye; remember we fought the good fight against liberalism and those that have that war on Christmas and all that stuff.
Take care; see you on the other side.

This long-time supporter of Adrian Smith has finally had it with Smith’s vote to approve of Obama’s amnesty plan. It makes me sick to know that after being so loyal with my votes and support, Smith has turned his back on us in the 3rd District. I could have voted for Scott Kleeb and gotten the same representation as I did voting for Smith.

#23: this is why I didn’t vote for Lee Terry. I was hoping the Republican leadership would take notice after losing both Eric Cantor and Lee Terry over immigration issues, but apparently they would rather hoist a giant F*** YOU! at the law-abiding citizens and immigrants of this great country.

No! I did not mean what she said. Adrian’s private life is none of my business. The way he joins up with Obama in leading this country down a rat hole IS my business. His vote should be troubling to every 3rd District voter who expected Adrian to help restore America.

Would it were that the rest of the members of Congress were equally effective at doing nothing.

The arrogance of the elected class is boundless. Because they’re big shots and holders of high office, they think they possess sufficient wisdom to fix everyone’s problems. They can’t even pick their own noses straight but they’d have no problem passing a law telling the rest of us how to do it.

People like to complain that we have a do-nothing Congress. As if that’s a bad thing.

Apparently THE number one issue to L St readers is keeping Hispanics out of the country. Looks like Street Sweepers readers are all about disrespecting the brown people.
I don’t know why people get so worked up about it because it’s not a big deal or a big problem. Immigrants from south of the border flee poverty, and violence, and when they get here work hard, are family oriented and are Catholics.
So what’s the big deal?
Give it up people and move on.
Ricky

Ricky, democrats would be all fired up to stop executive amnesty and build a border wall if all those “brown” people came in and voted Republican. In fact, I’m convinced the real reason democrats work so hard at not enforcing immigration laws is in hopes of preventing one county in Florida or Ohio from deciding the Presidential race in favor of a Republican.

Ricky, are you in a racially mixed marriage? No? Why not? Hate dark skin? And are you a war veteran? No? A coward? How do you earn your right to vote and even exist? What is your value? We know your purported values, but what is your own value? As it stands, you seem to have as much worth as a few pounds of ground beef. Hot air doesn’t count.

Tom Osborn was the top US football coach. Bgen Bacon is a glorified base commander. Both are dignified but the comparison is limited. And not necessarily to Bacon’s detriment.

Tom in the HOR was too un-Republican for his base, too political for his admirers, and too un-football for his fans. He then ran for governor against a same-party incumbent, only to be ignominiously whipped. He committed image suicide. He perhaps got beyond his talents and then ego took over. It happens. He was a great coach.

The military equivalent of an Osborne would be a 4 star Chairman of the Joint Chiefs running for the House. BGen Bacon is 3 steps below a full General.

However, unlike Osborne being the top coach running a ball game for college students, Bacon is in fact quite high among a rare few who have lead thousands of serious people in deadly circumstance and wielded millions on a budget to defend this nation. And that is the one thing Nebraskans revere more than football. Military service is a freebie Bacon enjoys. Yet you cannot command a headquarters wing without having a lot on the ball, so much so that you automatically scare any incumbent who might be facing you.

Of course, being a coach or a commander doesn’t automatically make one politically palatable. We have yet to see what Bacon brings to the plate. The reaction of Ashford supporters may be somewhat telling.

Ricky, I could see your point except that I’m too worried about the damage amnesty does to the African-American community. I realize that Democrats want to keep African-Americans dependent on their graft and killing each other, but lots of us want more for our fellow citizens. We want our neighbors to share in the American Dream, not have foreigners jump the line and steal their jobs.

Barely a month ago Pelini was the hot setup and the whole NE apparatus was behind him. Makes ya wonder if anybody behind this farce ever knew what they were doing in the first place. Leadership and responsibility are in short supply in Nebraska as usual.

I didn’t see any reports in the OWH about all the players who ran out of that meeting screaming, “MAWM, Coach said bad words.”

I’m not old enough to remember, was the OWH one of the papers that objected to George Patton using “bad” words in front of the troops while he was leading them to victory in Europe?

I’m not a huge football fan. I do understand that it’s one of the last places that qualifies as an exclusively “men’s” club. If you can’t handle the language, you should probably join a lady’s sewing circle – although you judgmental jerks would probably blush at some of the conversations that go on there…

Pelini was hired to coach a team of young adult men, not head up a divinity school. I can accept that the rough language goes along with the highly charged, testosterone laden atmosphere.

It’s to be expected – a college football coach is going to act a lot more like George Patton than Billy Graham.

I’ll compromise with you slightly on Pelini’s choice of vulgar words to use. None of it would be appropriate for a high school coach. Since his job was to help young men in their transition from adolescence to young adulthood, at the college level maybe he should have refrained from using coarse terms that are used for female genitalia. Instead of p***y and c**t, maybe he should have used terms for male genitalia – like d**k and pr**k. The boys can wait for the NFL coaches to expose them to those more advanced expletives.

The exact quote, “I’d rather f—— work at McDonald’s than work with some of those guys.” The gist is the same. Now when Are Y’all Kidding Me? said “What’s wrong with you morons?” and “you judgmental jerks”, how does one even say that and not appear to be a “judgmental jerk”, oneself?

There were a number of places I could have used the F word and it’s numerous variations as a modifier, but as a modifier it’s in a class by itself. There just isn’t anything that will substitute for it and carry its not so subtle weight and meaning. IO’s “quote” demonstrates the lack of understanding most people have of the proper uses for the F word. In Pelini’s original statement “F___ing is something of a linguistic exclamation point. IO improperly attached it as a modifier for McDonald’s. As Pelini clearly pointed out, it was not his intention to attach it in any way to McDonald’s.

“NotChuck”
Thank you for the correction. The info we got was from the Offutt site, which, for some reason, was not updated. We now have updated info (as well as a new pic) from the Air Force site.
Carry on.
-Ed.